Category Archives: COVID-19

The Next Wave is Here

Posted on December 8, 2021 by Michael Froomkin

Chart of Covid-19 virus particles in Boston’s wastewater by date.

From Massachusetts Water Resources Authority spotted via Exponential View.

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Big Fine for Drone Delivery of Cigarettes

Posted on November 1, 2021 by Michael Froomkin

A woman in Australia got fined AU$1334 (just under US$1000) for breaking COVID quarantine by having a drone deliver cigarettes to her hotel balcony.

I guess it’s important to enforce COVID quarantine rules vigilantly. But I’ve never heard of COVID being transmitted by a delivery drone, and indeed airborne transmission is apparently much more likely than surface contamination. And having stuff delivered must make it much less likely that people will sneak out to break quarantine.

Given all that, I wonder if drone delivery isn’t something Australia should encourage rather than fine?

Posted in COVID-19, Law: Criminal Law | 1 Comment

Latest Wrinkle in DeSantis Plot to Kill More Floridians

Posted on October 24, 2021 by Michael Froomkin

DeSantis COVID PolicyI so wish I were making this up. Our glorious Governor, Ron DeSantis (R-Covid), has hatched a new plot to spread the pandemic in Florida: he’s inviting all the law enforcement officers from other states who got fired for not getting a COVID vaccine to come on down and infect us here.

The reasons why cops and other first responders need to be vaccinated are obvious: they come into contact with a lot of people, which makes them higher risk to contract and then spread the virus. Plus many of the people police come into contact with have no choice about the contact, be a stop for questioning, a stop-and-frisk, or an arrest. Vaccinating police officers vastly reduces the chance they will become both ill and if ill, seriously ill, which is good for public safety because it means they are far less likely to be infectious and because it means they are available for duty.

In hopes of attracting these viral vectors to Florida DeSantis stated that he’ll ask his the state legislature to pass a law giving a $5000 bonus to any out-of-state police officers who relocate to Florida.

As to the argument that vaccinated police officers might be dangerous to our lives, DeSantis has an answer, albeit one utterly detached from reality:

“On a scientific basis, most of those first responders have had Covid and have recovered,” DeSantis claimed without evidence. “So they have strong protection and so I think that influences their decision on a lot of this that they have already had it and recovered.”

DeSantis delivered this fantasy on Fox News of course.

(It’s true that five times as many police officers have died of COVID as have been killed in the line of duty, but that’s a far cry from saying they all have natural immunities. It is also true that the evidence of the relative merits of natural immunity and vaccination immunity levels and reinfection rates are confusing and even contradictory.  But where the idea that cops have all had COVID comes from, I have no idea.)

Posted in 2022 Election, COVID-19, Florida | 2 Comments

DeSantis Urgently Seeks More COVID Deaths in Florida

Posted on October 21, 2021 by Michael Froomkin

DeSantis COVID PolicyImagine you are the Governor of the great state of Florida. You look out at the state from your perch in Tallahassee, and consider how to make best use of your control of gerrymandered majorities in both houses of the state legislature. What problem in the State might catch your eye, one so serious and immediate that it requires a special session of the legislature in November — rather than waiting until the regular session two months later?

If you are Governor DeSantis, it seems you decide that Florida’s #1 urgent problem is that not enough people have died from COVID-19. And, having made this observation, you set right out to solve the problem.

This is, most horribly, neither a joke nor an exaggeration: Governor DeSantis announced today that he plans to call a special session of the Florida legislature in order to pass laws that would ban any local government from imposing a vaccination mandate, and create incentives designed to discourage businesses from doing so.

The original trial balloon suggested a ban on private businesses demanding that workers get vaccinated, but perhaps claims that this was dictatorial socialism caused a mild retreat: now we’ll just have a law that makes businesses liable for any medical harm that results from a mandatory vaccination, and a removal of existing protections for businesses from coronavirus-related liability if the businesses mandates vaccination for their employees.

You may think I’m being over the top here, in saying that DeSantis wants more people to die, presumably to allow more posturing to further his Presidential ambitions.  But don’t take it from me.  Take it from State Rep. Carlos Guillermo Smith (D-Orlando), whom the Sun-Sentinel quoted as saying DeSantis’ plan is “disgusting”:

“It’s so nakedly political,” Smith said. “And Floridians will die because of DeSantis’s political ambitions. Gov. DeSantis is more than happy to trade the lives of Floridians for GOP votes in Iowa and campaign contributions in Utah. In 2021, being a Florida Republican is more about being anti-vax and pro-COVID-19 than anything else. … Welcome to Florida, where politics have become deadly.”

In any functioning polity we would impeach DeSantis; in Brazil they might indict him for mass murder. Instead, here, we take him seriously as a candidate first for re-election, then perhaps for President or Vice-President. That is our #1 urgent problem.

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Spot the Outlier

Posted on October 6, 2021 by Michael Froomkin

Source: Johns Hopkins via Kevin Drum

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Death Panels Spotted (2)

Posted on October 4, 2021 by Michael Froomkin

NYT, In Alaska’s Covid Crisis, Doctors Must Decide Who Lives and Who Dies: Amid the nation’s worst Covid-19 outbreak, patients are trapped in remote communities and doctors are prioritizing treatment based on who is most likely to survive.

Mike Baker writes,

There was one bed coming available in the intensive care unit in Alaska’s largest hospital.

It was the middle of the night, and the hospital, Providence Alaska Medical Center in Anchorage, had been hit with a deluge of coronavirus patients. Doctors now had a choice to make: Several more patients at the hospital, most of them with Covid-19, were in line to take that last I.C.U. spot. But there was also someone from one of the state’s isolated rural communities who needed to be flown in for emergency surgery.

Who should get the final bed?

Dr. ​​Steven Floerchinger gathered with his colleagues for an agonizing discussion. They had a better chance of saving one of the patients in the emergency room, they determined. The other person would have to wait.

That patient died.

“This is gut-wrenching, and I never thought I’d see it,” said Dr. ​​Floerchinger, who has been in practice for 30 years. “We are taxed to a point of making decisions of who will and who will not live.”

Of course, it’s a red state and vaccination rates are low, and cases are spiking.

Previously: Death Panels Spotted in Idaho.

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